Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown requested a $10,000 loan from one of her senior-level employees for her husband’s business, federal prosecutors revealed Friday in a court document that’s part of a case investigating alleged corruption in the clerk’s office.

That and other new details in a prosecution court document filed Friday draw the closest connections yet to Brown and the federal investigation of alleged buying of jobs and promotions within Brown’s office, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

Brown has not been charged with any crime and denies any wrongdoing.

For those of you lucky enough not to live in Crook County, Illinois--as I do--the Cook County Circuit Court Clerk seems like an insignificant post. And it is. But it also employees nearly 1,700 people, many of them patronage hires who do the bidding of the Democratic machine of Chicago and suburban Cook County.

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